On criminally natured settings
Personally, I'm really against an evil, seedy place
What's the fun of being evil and seedy if everyone is?
What would we do? Spend all our time running around plotting, stealing from, and killing each others characters off? If the majority of characters were evil, it would be so repetitive. Just the same evil stuff over and over again. And if the majority of us weren't tied up doing evil-like things like those, then it wouldn't be the seedy, evil location eve the location place we glamorize it as. I don't think an evil place would be nearly as fun as it first seems.
I just think that chaos, adventure, and conflict would loses their appeal if they were normal things. Seriously, what fun is it to be evil if everyone's expecting you to do it? Things would be much more interesting to me if the setting was somewhat straight-edge. Not necessarily rural and bland countryside, (please no), but just your average city-like place, and not some criminal-infested housing sector, so the characters would be the ones providing the excitement, and we wouldn't have any specific kind of storylines or characters pressured upon us by the setting
Even if you believe that characters wouldn't feel pressured at all to follow the setting (a bad idea to begin with), it'd be problematic because we'd either end up with a bunch of good or good-natured people hanging out in a place pointedly made out to be seedy or evil, or we'd end up with a bunch of predictable and repetitive characters and less diversity in roleplay. Evil can and should still exist in the settting, sure, I just don't want to center the entire environment around evil, it'd just get boring and limiting.
On using places with plenty of rules and laws
I definitely don't want to go with a place that has lots of rules. I don't want to go to a town with arbitrary limitations and heavy law enforcement. Especially because the CRT in emerging as the "strict" setting.
I think the place we choose should be loose and open to all kinds of characters and adventure.
Another way to look at it is this: Towns with heavily defining attributes (such as with heavy criminality, and quirky laws) work in tabletop roleplay, and video games where the characters are meant to experience the town in a certain way. In ISRP, in a setting which we want to be open to all sorts of adventures, they probably wouldn't work out too well. What I think would work best here is a flexible neutral or good setting, where the players are able to define the mood with how their characters act, and not have a consistent mood pushed upon them, or have their actions and interactions be inconsistent with the location.
Basically, I think that the location should stay true to its open, flexible designation, and we shouldn't get caught up with something like a seedy, criminal town just because it sounds fun. If we do end up doing a flavorful, strict setting for the CRT, then this one should definitely be open and loose.
On using rural areas
Also, a note, which was already implied earlier by one of the WizOs in the "miscellaneous" prevote discussion thread:
Because this is going to be a place where many people of many different natures and powers and goals are going to be hanging out or passing through, it would not make sense if this setting was a rural town or small plains area town, nor if the town was out in the middle of nowhere The place doesn't have to be a metropolis, it just can't be obscure in location or small town.
On using neverwinter or Baldur'S Gate
I don't that think choosing a town used as the focus for a popular computer game would be good, as there would be all these specifics with timeline and background necessary to remotely satisfy the storyline of the game. Also, it would cause confusion; we don't want people to think that this is a sort of hangout built for that game or because of that game; nor do we want people to think that it's a roleplaying auxilliary for that game. We also don't want to alienate people, because the very location might make them think that they'd be "out of the loop" in that area because they hadn't played the computer game. If we were to use a town which has been a central focus of a popular computer game. the negatives would far outweigh the potential positives.
Waterdeep sounds like an okay idea, but definitely not great...
Luskan is a waterfront merchant sailing town, but is almost exclusively populated by humans, and does not welcome visitors and travelers. Same pretty much goes for Port Llast.
Longsaddle is too rural...
can't think of any more towns at the time... eh, I've written far too much anyway...